[UE4] Cave Altar Environment WIP (First Attempt)
triangle
Hello!
New to polycount, but also feeling rather new to 3D and engine related things. I'm currently a Games Art Student and one of my assignments is to recreate a concept or film scene in UE4. This is the first time I'm really tackling creating an environment, and also the first time I hope to tackle modular pieces or tilable textures. So I have a lot to learn.
I picked the concept art piece by Rolf Bertz. (I noticed this has been a previous environment challenge so I'm in the process of reading through that thread and making notes.)
Concept:
To get a better understanding, I created some moodboards.
I created a separate moodboard for the statue, since I figured its a pretty complex thing for a beginner, and will be the last thing I approach.
My planning/breakdown for modular assets:
Starting my blockout, my current thought process is to create decent base meshes that can be taken into Zbrush for high poly sculpting, then brought back into Maya to create Low Poly Meshes for the engine. Baking/Texturing will be a combination of Substance Painter and zbrush.
New to polycount, but also feeling rather new to 3D and engine related things. I'm currently a Games Art Student and one of my assignments is to recreate a concept or film scene in UE4. This is the first time I'm really tackling creating an environment, and also the first time I hope to tackle modular pieces or tilable textures. So I have a lot to learn.
I picked the concept art piece by Rolf Bertz. (I noticed this has been a previous environment challenge so I'm in the process of reading through that thread and making notes.)
Concept:
To get a better understanding, I created some moodboards.
I created a separate moodboard for the statue, since I figured its a pretty complex thing for a beginner, and will be the last thing I approach.
My planning/breakdown for modular assets:
Starting my blockout, my current thought process is to create decent base meshes that can be taken into Zbrush for high poly sculpting, then brought back into Maya to create Low Poly Meshes for the engine. Baking/Texturing will be a combination of Substance Painter and zbrush.
Replies
Using basic placeholder substance painter textures.
Okay, so one of the last things to sculpt in my room scene is the Statue, which I intended to leave till the end as I've never attempted to sculpt a person before (my extent of zbrush is those candles above).
I think I have an okay start.. but I guess I'm looking for a little crit on the anatomy, as I'm still in the build up stage. Any tips or crit with Zbrush and anatomy would be greatly appreciated!
I would like to have her eyes closed.. so I'm gonna need to find figure that out without it looking weird.
Literally 5 minutes in, I realised the importance of ref because I apparently have no real idea what people look like.
Hey meloncov! Pretty much all of this is new to me, so I felt out of my element from the very beginning. Im definitely from a more 2D/bookish background than my peers.
I dont think we can collaborate for the assignment. But honestly, Im not sure what I want to be so Im just looking to improve all round. This is pretty much my first time trying to model a character, and my first time creating a scene. So I do feel a bit like a headless chicken regardless.
So first things first. Your pillars are looking really good. I really like the look of them. When you take a second pass at them, I think you do need to look at making them dirtier (dirtier at the bottom and cleaner at the top and all that) and I'd also add some greenery to break them up a little more. I also don't like the look of the broken one in the background, that could be a placeholder but I'd recommend - well - shattering it. Haha.
So onto your character. I noticed you said that it was your first character, but I'm not going to say to choose something a little easier (although that could be good advice if this is a heavy deadline piece.) Don't expect this one to be the one you use in the final. You'll learn a tonne in making just this first model and you'll be able to take it forward.
With that being said, I went into photoshop and I took a few annotation. (DISCLAIMER: my character knowledge isn't 10/10 but I think this might help you.)
http://i.imgur.com/UbJXdG0
The first thing I noticed is your legs. Two things about them: they're really long and they're really skinny. In your concept, the statue is almost angelic, but yours feels more ghoulish. And your proportions are out of whack from first glance. I went back and took this image: https://morezmore.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/female_proportions_front.jpg (not my image, figured I'd make that clear) and overlaid it in Photoshop and I marked two major issues. The first is where your shoulders are compared to the shoulders on the image, so your neck is a bit short and your head is a bit too small. The second and more major one is the legs being way too long. You need to bring the torso down to make it feel a bit better.
The overlaid image: http://i.imgur.com/bpGup6j
While you don't need to follow this exactly, the changes in an actual female won't be even close to as drastic as yours, so that'd be the first thing I'd change.
Then the few other minor things I pointed out.
- For a good A-Pose, I'd bring the arms in closer to where I marked them (it's not perfect). You may also need to check the lengths of the arms.
- You don't need the fingers straight for a good character, sometimes it can be better if they're curled, but from what I can see, your whole hand is curled in and that won't work.
- As mentioned above, the face is too round and too short. The chin needs to be pulled down a little. Or if you wanted a small face (I think it'd still need to be a bit bigger) you will want to pinch the jaw bones in more, they're very flayed as they are.
- Make you're legs fatter
- Brings the breasts closer together, not by much but some.
Alright, I hope that helped. And I will let you know, you're doing a lot better than I first did when I made a character. You should have seen the head on mine, it looked positively alien. Good luck and I'll try to drop in in the future
Thank you! I took a bit of a break, but Im ready to come back to this. I'm looking into Substance Designer to redo my textures, and of course achieve that second pass with the dirt.
Thank you for all the advice on the sculpture. I'm honestly not sure if we're allowed to use placeholder art, but it may come to a point where this goes so badly, I don't put the sculpture in at all. That being said, I've tried to apply your advice below. Losing some detail through dynameshing, and also tried to give her a little more elf ears.
I'm noticing two things now: you're ankles are really thing and I think your calves end a little early AND your belly is really flat. While toned bellies are usually pretty flat, they do have some roundness to them and that should be your next point of focus. After that, I would just start blocking in the face and then keep improving on it. Keep it up dude. :>
Little Update. Been getting acquainted with substance Designer, or trying to. Currently working on the texture for the ruin base, however, it doesn't seem to be tiling on one side. Is this because I began with a noise instead of a pattern? Is there a way to make it tile completely? It tiles on all other sides.
EDIT:
Still haven't sorted out the previous issue. But I have however, after following some tutorials, got the ruin base texture to something that I like.
Time to try something else in Substance.
Didn't realise substance designer was so awesome! Probably a messy way of doing things, but I figure this is a nice base graph to figure out how I want the brick texture in the room - without having to worry about whether it matches the rest of the textures! Any Crit on where I should take this?
I will also be redoing the pillar textures to work with substance designer.
In between my last post and this post, I had to do some work on my other briefs which required zbrush, and learnt a lot of them, although they are also still WIPs.
You can peak at them here:
[spoiler]
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Much happier with it now, but something looks a bit off. My main concern is the ears, I will have to work on them, But again crit is appreciated!
Sort of went for what @Meloncov said, about doing a more stylised piece.
Process:
I cleaned up the original, and tried to follow some plane reference - advice I have seen on a different thread. At some point I realised, this slightly chiselled look might work well for a statue. Although, I have mostly been following tutorials on the pixologic site, as theres many features to zbrush and turns out blindly using clay buildup isn't always the best or cleanest option.